Detecting the movement of living beings, in particular of persons, has become increasingly important over the years in sports, wellness, and fitness and also in particular in medicine, for example, in diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation. For example, there are systems which are known in the fields of sports and fitness, in which the movement times and step numbers or step sequences are measured, as discussed in WO 1998058236, for example. In the medical field in particular, parameters pertaining to gait such as stepping times, right-left gait symmetry and force of tread are of interest here, movement monitors using software being available today, making it possible to ascertain such parameters. To do so, the acceleration values of the body in the longitudinal, transverse and/or vertical directions are detected by acceleration sensors attached to the body. Such signals are typically evaluated using step counting algorithms. For special medical research, in particular in gerontology or in therapeutic management of chronic diseases, a differentiated classification of movements detected according to “walking,” “sitting,” “standing” and “lying” is desirable, and such a classification should be possible in an everyday environment without any major equipment complexity in order not to restrict the affected persons due to an apparatus to be carried along and multiplex cabling.
Since the corresponding group of people should carry such devices on them at all times, if possible, but at the same time their mobility and motor system are often restricted, the systems known from the related art are not suitable. The data ascertained using detection devices known from the related art additionally do not generally enable a reliable differentiation between the states “sitting” and “standing” or a reliable detection of a transition from sitting to standing or vice versa. Japanese patent document JP-2004096457 also discusses a monitoring device for clinic beds, monitoring a patient lying in a clinic bed with the aid of a three-dimensional sensor. One disadvantage of this is that this system has only a very limited area of use.